Porn would be all but unproducible in California, and 26-year olds might become the new MILFs, if Cal/OSHA has its way

Cal/OSHA has been busy improving its draft regulations covering the filming of adult content over the last few years…if by “improving” one means crafting precise language and expansive tools designed to completely destroy adult production in California via over-regulation.

The regulations currently in effect, embodied in California Code of Regulations Title 8 Sec. 5193, were written for medical clinics and mortuaries back in the 1990s, and mandate “barrier protections” for healthcare workers exposed to blood or infectious materials. This application of the regs should strike any rational person as reasonable and necessary, given that the nature of these businesses.

However, the state, in its wisdom, (lol) chose to apply it to adult content shoots as well. Thus, anything you wouldn’t want to happen to you in the course of your duties in a clinic (such as having someone ejaculate or squirt on you, or penetrate you), in the context of adult film sets became a forbidden “exposure event” — even though such “exposure” was the job itself.

Egged on by AIDS Healthcare Foundation (AHF), Cal/OSHA has undertaken to create a brand new code section, Sec. 5193.1, and the latest draft, dated 12-1-2014, makes it crystal clear that what you or I call “porn”, Cal/OSHA calls impermissible “exposure”, requiring detailed documentation and record-keeping, medical follow-up, etc…

These proposed Cal/OSHA rules do not regulate adult production as we know it; they forbid it.

Reproduced in full, below, its requirements are jaw-droppingly draconian:

it defines “sexual activity” requiring “condoms or other protective barriers” as vaginal, anal, and oral sex;

“Post Exposure” medical follow-up, at employer expense, in the event a performer has “eye, mouth, other mucous membrane, non-intact skin, or parenteral contact” with “potentially infectious materials” such as “pre-ejaculate, ejaculate, semen, vaginal secretions, fecal matter and rectal secretions, … and any other bodily fluid when visibly contaminated with blood or all bodily fluids in situations where it is difficult or impossible to differentiate between bodily fluids.”

an array of mandatory vaccinations;

garments or sheets touched by ejaculate or other fluids to be treated as hazardous waste;

“Personal Protective Equipment” required for performances such as squirting scenes, which prevent bodily fluids “from passing through to or reaching the employee’s eyes, mouth, or other mucous membranes” (think goggles and face shields).

performer and employer training, and mandatory safety meetings prior to a scene;

producers (“employers”) pay for performer testing;

a plethora of burdensome medical record-keeping requirements (such as the maintaining of medical records for “at least the duration of employment plus 30 years”) that are likely to raise privacy concerns among performers.

Moreover, the regs are written broadly enough that certain requirements might apply not only to the original creator(s) of the content, but also distributors.

Both “Production” and “Scene”, for instance, are defined as a “depiction” that is “recorded or live” in which there is “sexual activity”. In the absence of a definition of “producer” which limits the term to those who create or direct a “Scene” it may be construed as applicable to “depictions” distributed.

That’s right, in addition to demanding that producers only create content thought to be unmarketable (condoms for oral, no ejaculation or squirting without barriers such as goggles or face shields, etc), 26-year olds would, in effect, become the new MILFs. (A similar problem arises for male talent over age 21.)

As to performers already in the talent pool, If (for sake of example) these regs were adopted this year, the oldest possible female would be 35 today, and the oldest possible male, 30.

The Standards Board will reportedly consider the draft rules at its March 19 meeting in Sacramento. A 45-day public comment period is expected to begin very soon. FSC and APAC are expected to vigorously oppose the draft regs, and expert medical and epidemiological testimony is anticipated.

Nothing surprising here to anyone the least bit familiar with the personalities involved in drafting this monstrosity. The Cal-OSHA crew have been a part of “The L.A. Working Group,” along with AHF, that initiated the whole campaign to crush porn by imposing unworkable “health” regulations. Don’t think for a minute that they don’t understand what the impact of these preposterous restrictions would be. Their aim, despite some quacking to the contrary, has always been to drive the porn industry out of California and subsequently out of existence. Their motives may very from individual to individual, but all are political or economic and none the least bit concerned with the health and safety of performers.

This is a moral crusade bent on kicking up a moral panic and fomented by ideological extremists doing their “work” on the taxpayer’s dime.

The best thing that could be done for the health and safety of everyone in this state, which has almost no enforcement capability for dealing with truly high-risk industries like farming and construction, would be to fire the lot of them and bring in some sane people who actually understand the job for which they were hired.

These people are vile and what they propose is far more sickening to anyone who values living in a free society than any condition such preposterous regulations would be likely to prevent in real life, which is none.

Why is no one dragging the film industry as a whole into this? Every day the film industry makes movies with sex and love scenes in them as well as very violent bloody scenes. However, I read their safety manual and it hasn’t been updated since 2002. I’d like to know where the line is being drawn between MGM making a remake of “Last Tango in Paris” for example vs. a Wicked Pictures movie being made. Who makes the call between a film being an “adult” industry film vs. a film with adult content? If you were to get the film industry on the hook with these regulations – they’d have a lobbyist in there so fast your head would spin to make sure these rules don’t apply to them – and apply to them it will. They go after the porn industry FIRST and then they’ll start applying this to any film and “grandfather” it in. But who is going to the film industry people and getting them involved in this fight now? Certainly the porn industry has enough high profile people that can start getting Hollywood celebrities involved in this issue.

These regs are nothing less than the Swedish Model of sex work applied to porn…..with the same intended results of driving legal consensual acts of sex out of business under the cover of “protection” of the “underserved”. This is sexual fascism with a neoliberal patina.